|
Baseball Dreams and Shortstop by Charles Ghigna
Charles Ghigna (aka "Father Goose") is a poet, children's author, and nationally syndicated feature writer who helps promote the love of children’s literature by speaking at schools, colleges, conferences, and libraries throughout the U.S. and overseas.
He is the author of more than thirty award-winning books of poetry for children and adults from Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Disney, Hyperion, Abrams and other publishers. Thousands of his poems also appear in textbooks, anthologies, magazines and newspapers.
Each of the following two poems are used with his expressed permission and can be found in his superb book A Fury of Motion : Poems For Boys (ordering details below) — a Baseball Almanac favorite that belongs on every fan of baseball poetry.
|
|
"I think I always wanted to be a writer, but didn't know it. I wrote a silly story in the third grade about a talking freckle on a boy's face. My teacher made a big deal about it. My parents used to make me stand in front of the couch and read it to their friends when they came to visit. The story caught on and kept getting longer. I was finally invited to read it on the air at the local TV station. When I got back to school some of the kids made fun of me. I stopped writing and started playing baseball. I played baseball all through school, on my high school baseball team, and on the local American Legion Team. I loved baseball. I even went to spring training camp in Fort Myers, Florida and tried out with the Pittsburgh Pirates. I'm still waiting to hear from them. In the meantime, I've been writing poems." - Charles Ghigna in a Julie DeVillers Interview
|
|
|
|
Published: Boyd Mills Press (2003)
|
|
Before the bayonet replaced the bat,
Jack Marsh played second base for Yale;
his spikes anchored into the August clay,
his eyes set deep against the setting sun.
The scouts all knew his numbers well,
had studied his sure hands that flew
like hungry gulls above the grass;
but Uncle Sam had scouted too,
had chosen first the team to play
the season's final game of '44,
had issued him another uniform
to wear into the face of winter moon
that shone upon a snowy plain
where players played a deadly game,
where strikes were thrown with each grenade
and high pitched echoes linger still,
beyond the burned out foreign fields
and boyhood dreams of bunts and steals,
young Jack Marsh is rounding third,
and sliding, sliding safely home.
|
|
Baseball Dreams by Charles Ghigna ©
In memory of Jack Marsh,
second baseman, Yale University, 1943
|
|
|
Published: Boyd Mills Press (2003)
|
|
The slits of his eyes
hidden in shadows
beneath the bill of his cap,
he watches and waits
like a patient cat
to catch what comes
his way.
Crack!
and he pounces
upon the ball,
his hands flying
above the grass,
flinging his prey
on its way
across the diamond
into a double-play.
|
|
Shortstop by Charles Ghigna ©
|
|
|
|
|
